Richard Dawkins
The God Delusion
This book made quite a splash in 2006 when it was published. I picked it up in 2007 to see what all the fuss was about. Didn't bother to write about it until 2008.
Dawkins is a well-known atheist who loves the controversy surrounding his philosophy. He gets validated by people like the South Park guys who had a version of Dawkins create a religion of science, full of all the brainwashing stupidity he attacks in his books. I'm sure Dawkins has already written something about it, he loves the spotlight of controversy.
This book claims to be written for the non-Atheist as a kind of missionary tract. Instead it is more like the kind of apologetic literature I read as a Mormon. While it claims to be for the non-believer, it is really just an excuse to re-affirm the believers.
The reasoning is a bit convoluted, but the stories are hilarious. The most unsettling part is how much of it is accurate. If it were more coherent as an argument I might recommend it. As it is, the book is a great string of funny stories, clever observations, and mildly witty paragraphs but never quite seals the deal it starts out to make.
Of interest:
On Pascal's wager that one should hedge one's bets on the existence of God by believing "just in case" (no harm done if you believe and are right, plenty of harm done if you don't believe and are wrong):
Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don't. Pascal's wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he'd see through the deception. The ludicrous idea that believing is something you can decide to do is deliciously mocked by Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, where we meet the robotic Electric Monk, a labour-saving device that you buy 'to do your believing for you'. The de luxe model is advertised as 'Capable of believing things they wouldn't believe in Salt Lake City'.
-104
He makes a fascinating argument on pages 186ff that we
1-look for some agent to cause every event (hating the computer when it doesn't work, for example)
2-have the same rush of mania and chemicals when we fall in love as when we fall for God
Item 2 has some serious differences, but the similarities are striking:
--A reverence for icons from the object of our affection
--Warm and comforting feelings of being loved and protected and valued
--Emotional support in difficult times
--Loss of fear of death
I've often read women particularly who view their conversion in very romantic terms. LDS Missionary boys I knew had the same kind of protective feeling about their Church that fathers have over their wives or children. Both are childish reactions to primal emotions.
On being tolerant of non-fanatic believers:
As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers...The teachings of 'moderate' religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism.
-306
John Krakauer's
book is an exploration of this same facet in Mormonism: how the teachings of the pleasant, law-abiding, mainstream church can spin off such violence as the Lafferty brothers.
In all I can tepidly recommend Dawkin's book:
--For atheists because its funny and reaffirming (though that very fact makes it somewhat unsettling)
--For open-minded non-Atheists because it won't convert you, but will probably force your faith to deepen as you come to grips with some of the points he makes
--For close-minded theists? You haven't even read my review, so my recommendation doesn't matter anyway. Go back to not reading your own sacred books and complaining about how the rest of us are the cause of all suffering
